


Another six months I'll be unknown

by HestiasHearth



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (without any actual violence happening in this fic), Gen, Graphic Violent Imagery, M/M, Past (Canon) Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Unsanitary, a deeply offensive prison joke that is written exclusively as a character fault, but not The One you're thinking of bc that one can fuck off forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28322511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HestiasHearth/pseuds/HestiasHearth
Summary: “What is he going to do, man. When he realizes it was—“ Here Ronan runs out of words, but not in a way body language can help fully illustrate. He doesn’t meaningfully snap his fingers or flick a spare screw across the room.“When he realizes it was fucking nothing."Ronan and Noah disassemble dusty old machinery on the first floor of Monmouth Manufacturing.--A Christmas gift oneshot for elliptical, cross-posted from Tumblr.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Ronan Lynch, Noah Czerny/Ronan Lynch, either/or - Relationship
Kudos: 7





	Another six months I'll be unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elliptical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/gifts).



“What is he going to do, man. When he realizes it was—“ Here Ronan runs out of words, but not in a way body language can help fully illustrate. He doesn’t meaningfully snap his fingers or flick a spare screw across the room.

(Ronan and Noah are disassembling a rusted beast of a Something-Or-Other on the first floor of Monmouth, just to see how nasty it is in there. In search of grossness at all times, they both prepare their potential dares in advance: touch something, kiss something.)

Noah doesn’t prompt him. He drags the edge of a coin against the lip of an increasingly stripped Phillips-head screw, because it was their final remaining obstacle, and it had spurned the screwdriver.

Ronan drops his arms against his thighs and kicks the unnamed, decades-old Metal Thing.

“Rage against the machine?” Noah suggests, not as an answer to the question.

“When he realizes it was fucking nothing. You know— _you_ know, when a diagnosis is terminal. When it’s already fucking rotting. You get this. I bet you can smell it.”

“You’re not dying.”

Ronan laughs. He does the thing that is an implication of a laugh, the thing that is hardened and wears black clothes and makes every teacher to step into a room with him instinctually check their chair for tacks.

“Gimme that,” he reaches for the coin, which Noah hands to him. The real thought is _maybe this shit will give me tetanus._ But Noah breathing over his shoulder forces him to be careful.

They sit in silence for a while, Ronan digging with a little more precision at the screw that Noah has probably ruined beyond usefulness.

Noah watches him in silence for several seconds longer.

Eventually, Ronan’s shoulders shake.

“Fuck, man, _you’re_ going to be fine, but what is he gonna do— What is he gonna do when he wakes up in the morning and goes ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph, I wasted a year of my life on a leech, on a corpse—“

He collapses back. Noah’s hands are over his, which shocks his system, and he wants to say something grossly insulting about Noah thinking he actually was going to give himself tetanus, which he wasn’t.

Gansey’s upstairs and he’s going to hear.

“I can blast ‘Na Na-Na Na,’” Noah says. It would not be until a later point in the semester that these two discover the murder squash song. “You’re not dying.”

“Fuck you.”

_Don’t throw it away._ Noah does not say this.

Noah leans back, which is all but insisting Ronan use his stomach as a cushion. The floor is grimy down here and they hadn’t bothered cleaning it. “What are you going to do,” Noah says instead, “when one tries to kill you again?”

Ronan passively imagines punching a hole in the ceiling where it towers forty feet high. He doesn’t think it in a way that means anything; this is like playing with a coffee table puzzle to Ronan.

“I don’t know. Kill it, probably.”

“Go for the neck,” Noah suggests. “Intestines. Never mind. That might be nasty. The neck works.”

“What’s wrong with you, man?”

Noah shrugs. Ronan would reach an arm around to ruffle his hair, but he’s not a 100% person right now, so he does not.

“Chain around the neck. Send it down the stairs. Like in _Die Hard._ ”

“I’ll just shank it. Sharpen a kitchen spoon, hide it up my ass ‘til curfew. Gotta pass inspection.”

“You could stick its face in an outlet.”

Ronan calculates and doesn’t comment on the improbability of this causing an electrocution, even if his movements while fighting a dream demon for his life could be so precise. Sure, let Noah believe he’s Jackie Chan. The actual scene won’t be as interesting, but it probably will be breaking the neck. It will probably be a messier less cool scene scattered across the floor. It’s gonna get blows on him first.

“Choke it on a six-pack ring.” This makes Noah guffaw. “Yeah, I’ll kill it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you toss a fic out to the ether and go "I hope this helps more than it hurts"
> 
> Take care, y'all.


End file.
